Sun Mote Copse What a fool believes

I'm not crying, you're crying!

Instead of letting him go, letting him stew like he had let her stew over the past several weeks, she confronted him. Niamh stood before him and let him know that, if he walked away, it was over. Niamh, he said, exasperated, We were never on. This—whatever it is—doesn't work for me. I don't want to just take a lashing from you while you refuse to see my side of it at all. That's not how a partnership works. I won't subject myself to that. And he certainly wouldn't subject his children to it, even if she wouldn't be Figment and Fennec's mother.

If this relationship starts with ultimatums, I don't even want to know how it will end. And I can assure you that any relationship that starts out like this won't last. If there was one thing Phox knew, it was that he wanted to choose carefully. Even if Niamh had seemed like the perfect, most obvious choice before, it was clear now that it was going to take a lot of work, probably from both of them, if they wanted that to happen. Phox just wasn't sure he wanted to put in the work when he could spend that time being a father to Figment and Fennec.